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Our Name

The Story of Our Name

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… All right, it was only the late 1980s on Penn’s campus in Philadelphia, but it seems like a faraway time and place now! Jean, then my college sweetheart, and I gathered regularly with a handful of talented students of faith to wrestle with the greatest of questions of life… who are we, why were we put on this planet, what is truth, what is beauty, and — in light of these questions — how should we live?

It may sound very serious (with all the passion and zeal of youth thrown in), but it was a great deal of fun — good food, good drink, and most importantly good friendship and fellowship — with liberal doses of St. Augustine and Dostoyevski to enliven it even further. We know that doesn’t spell “party” for everyone, but for us it was fun!

In this spirit, our friend Mark Basnage suggested a name for our group. (He seems to be especially gifted in finding names, as he was also the author of the name “SixSeeds!”) He came up with “Sword & Spoon,” to encompass a search for truth and all its application points in real life. The “sword” represents the inevitable sharp edges of such an endeavor, while the “spoon” represents the right measures of grace, mercy, and nurture.

More than 25 years later, we continue to search for that truth and apply it with ample measures of mercy in all of our initiatives. Now, as then, we do so with friends and partners, and we are honored to carry the Sword & Spoon name and spirit forward in that effort.